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Viva La Menopause: Hair and Make-Up

There comes a day in your life when you’re standing in a mirrored-changing room and you look at yourself and think, ‘Effing hell! I look like an ageing glam-rocker!’

It’s a defining moment in your history.

We can’t stop ourselves from ageing but wearing the wrong make-up (or too much of it) can make us look older than our years. Teenage girls literally wear their own body weight in make-up to look older, right? So it’s logical that when we get older – the opposite applies. We need LESS make-up to look younger.

Here are my tips for looking magnificent after the menopause.

Hair

After the menopause most women suffer some level of hair loss. Why? Because Mother Nature is a cow.

Technically it’s to do with lack of oestrogen. You’ll find yourself de-clogging the plug-hole everytime you wash your hair. However, there are things you can do like limiting the use of hair straighteners etc and using hair-thickening shampoos. This is where ‘back-combing’ becomes a necessity rather than a fad. Do you know why little old ladies have their hair back-combed? It’s to make what little hair they have left go further. Of course, you could always do a Dolly Parton and slap a wig on?

When it comes to colouring hair- darker colours can be ageing and accentuate thinning hair. You also have to disciplined when it comes to touching your roots up or you end up looking like a badger. I’m currently a rather fetching Dot Cotton shade of red. Like Autumn, it’s my final fling with colour before I succumb to the monochrome. Once I hit 50, I intend to strip my hair of dye and have it cut short and a bit spiky. If it’s a really crap shade of grey, I will have it highlighted. Either way, I aim to be flippin’ funky at fifty!

Make-Up

There is a specific order to putting on make-up. However, I am a lot like the Morecambe and Wise sketch where Eric is playing ‘all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order’. As long as I manage to get my foundation on first, I consider myself to be WINNING!

So, once we’ve faffed about with cleansers and anti-ageing creams, we can begin. *cracks fingers*

Foundation

Use the BEST foundation you can afford. You want one that STAYS on. I use Estee Lauder’s Double Wear which retails at around £30. It’s expensive and I have to flog a bodily organ every four months to afford it but it makes me look semi-alive and it stays on until I jet-blast it off the next morning last thing at night. This is the Chuck Norris of foundations.

Concealer

Bags under your eyes? You’ll need concealer. I use Touche Éclat by YSL which retails for around £25. It isn’t the cheapest but it is the only concealer that works on my dark circles. I have dark circles because insomnia goes hand in hand with the menopause and this little treasure gives the illusion of me having my full quota of kip. If you can’t bag a night’s sleep, blag a nights sleep.

Blusher

Once the hormones go feral it’s best to opt for cream blusher and BLEND that sucker in well or you’ll look a proper div, yeah?

Eyebrows

If you’re anything like me – thirty odd years of plucking the living shit out of your eyebrows has left them sparser than a Christmas tree in January. You can go and get some tattooed on if you like but be warned that it could leave you looking a 42 caret plonker if it goes wrong. Just add a few ‘hairs’ with an eyebrow pencil or eye-shadow. No, not Azure Blue! I mean one that matches your eyebrow hair – what’s left of it.

Eye-Shadow

Glitter is fabulous but glittery eye-shadow should ONLY be worn by teenage girls under the influence of Lambrusco. Glittery or frosted eye-shadow accentuates every crease. After a few hours, your eye-shadow settles into your eye-crevices and it looks nasty. You might as well have a neon sign over your head which says, ‘WELL PAST IT’. Opt for matt or cream shadows and leave the neon shades to the kids, eh?

I should mention brow bones here. You know? The area where you used to put your highlighter? Basically there is this ‘landslide’ thingy that happens with the skin on the brow bones as we age. That once defined line between brow-bone and eyelid becomes confined to the photograph album. I think there are exercises you can do to tone things up but I say SOD THAT for a game of conkers!

Eye-Liner

It’s the 1980s on the phone for you, dear. IT WANTS IT’S EYELINER BACK!

Confession time. I wore Electric Blue eyeliner until I was in my 40s. I have GREEN eyes!!! Awks!!

Mascara

Mascara is my number one favourite item of make-up. I would stab ANYBODY who tries to come between me and my magic wand. Thing is, I know my eyes are my best feature. Like me, they’re odd. One is green and the other is a mixture of green and brown. It’s very me. Mascara brings them to life and even if I was in the throes of a massive heart attack, I would still attempt to get a few strokes in..

No. YOU have a filthy mind!

My tip is to buy a decent mascara and use three coats. Then once a week, use a shit brand while you are doing the housework. Those three coats will weigh an absolute TON – the advantage being that it gives your ageing eyelids a much needed workout. Just as if your eyelids are pumping weights, innit?!

Lipstick

As we age, our lips become thinner. They can become wrinkled and lines may develop around our mouths. The boundary between lips and skin are less defined so lipstick ‘bleeds’ and if you’re a fan of red lippy you can end up looking like Robert Smith from The Cure if you’re not careful. However, there are things you can do though such as avoiding glossy or creamy lipsticks. Or how about ditching the lippy altogether and settling for a nice lip-balm? If you want to be really cheap – slap on some of that Vaseline that’s been festering in the back of your bathroom cabinet since 1988.

That’s it for this time, folks. VIVA LA MENOPAUSE!

Good morning, madam. May I interest you in our skin-care range? We do sell this astringent – I don’t know if it’s strong enough for what you need, but it brought my chip pan up lovely. ~ Victoria Wood ~ As Seen On TV.

11 thoughts on “Viva La Menopause: Hair and Make-Up”

Hahaha 😂 Menopause…….love that little word. I think there’s a hint in the word for men to stay away MEN-O-PAUSE – ‘stop there mister and give this woman a miss!’ 🤣
You will look great with a short spiky little hair do, you’ve got a nice little face & body to match it! I’m just not sure we’re I’m going with mine, apart from vacuuming it up off the floor!
One good thing about usually being without makeup is that I don’t scare the living life out of people when I don’t wear it and actually I’m not keen of the feel of it. Even more no when having a little flush 🔥😅. That feeling of dabbing your face and seeing a perfect white tissue looking a very odd shade back at you 😳
Oh the joys of getting older…..NOT!!
Great blog Tracy, are you trying to compete with Dave on the beauty front 😉?
Big loves 😘💞xxx

You look great without make-up. You look FABULOUS with it. Your Instagram piccies prove it. 🙂
I think my blog differs slightly to Daves lolol though I reckon he should write more about us oldies lol 😉 Lufs you. xxxx

Hilarious! Not the tips, which are all very pertinent, but your use of illustration! I rarely put make up on unless I’m going out – so, yes…very rarely! I use L’Occitane Shea Butter skincare range and have only recently found a beautiful taupe eyeliner that accentuates my blue/grey eyes which I’ve been told are my best feature. Love a bit of Benefit mascara. Getting ready for a party recently I could not get my foundation to stay on my face because I was so sweaty – before we started dancing! And there were all these 20 somethings with barely a bead of moisture and immaculately presented faces…how do they do that?

They manage it because their hormones are functioning normally. 😉
RE the foundation. I really recommend the Double Wear. Being menopausal, I sweat 24/7 and it doesn’t come off until I take it off with cleansers. It’s expensive but it works. if it’s an important ‘do’, I’d give it a go. If you shop around, you can get it for about £25. X

At last I can share some physiological wisdom in return and save countless other women from stressing unnecessarily with hair loss. It’s a common misconception but the fact is that you don’t actually lose the hair. They just relocate to your face and neck. Simply start your brush from the nape of the neck and run the f*cker up aaaaallthe way until you get to the top of your head. Be careful to avoid catching one of your new chins in the bristles. If you can do this all the way around your head, you will be shocked to discover how much effing hair is there but nowhere close to where it once was.

I can vouch for Touche Éclat. Works miracles. Had I known how much it cost I wouldn’t have used it so liberally though! Then again, now I know how much it cost I realise I came away from my divorce with far more than I appreciated at the time. Are you meant to declare what you find down the back of the radiator?